Open Primaries

Saturday, August 04, 2007

More Conversation on YearlyKos

At the risk of reacting to the Big Blog, here are a few more YearlyKos abstentions: Shaun Mullen (Kiko's House is now on The Hankster sidebar...) cites E.J. Dionne Jr.'s WaPo commentary ("Daily Kos is often described as liberal, but it is, more than anything, partisan....") and is baking cookies.... Yummy! Pete Abel agrees with a small caveat...

Here's my 2 cents: YearlyKos will add nothing to a much needed debate on the future direction of our country. The questions will be neatly arranged within a Democratic Party framework while appearing to be coming from the grassroots. That's a lot like Clintonism... There'll be a lot of balooey about taking over the DP by the grassroots, and the MSM will drone on about how the DLC will dominate in the end... Too bad. The time for insurgence in the DP is over. Without a relationship to independent voters -- left, center and right -- YearlyKos will remain safely within the boundaries of the very partisan political culture that is responsible for the bad policy we are living with right now.

Unless grassroots Democrats are willing to talk about the Democrats' complicity in the current political arrangement, they'll be left with griping about how the Dems are not as organized as the Repubs and can't win elections because all the corporate money is behind the Repubs, etc. Lots of Bill O'Reilly stuff... They'll end up blaming the base and supporting the top of the ticket no matter what. They'll say Billary is better than Bush. They'll organize the grassroots to back the lesser of the 2 evils because we can't afford to have another Repub in office.... Blah, blah, blah...

Partisanship is a double-edged sword. Yes, it creates a framework where it is almost impossible to have serious discussion about real solutions to the world's problems. Root causes are totally obscured.

On the other hand, when Harry Reid can maintain party discipline to pass a resolution opposing the war, and holding his "moderates" in line, good for him.

Which brings up another issue. Nonpartisanship is spoken of in (at least) two very different ways. First is the Broderite "moderate" position that cries out for some murky ground BETWEEN Democrats and Republicans, that constantly chastizes the Democrats for being too extreme in opposing the war, government surveillance, investigating the crimes of the Bush administration, a nonpartisanship that serves the Beltway Bandits perfectly. The second is a nonpartisanship that is truly INDEPENDENT of the Beltway Bandits. That is the nonpartisanship I can support.

I fear that this site mushes these radically different brands of nonpartisanship, thereby tarnishing the brand of INDEPENDENT nonpartisanship.